Volunteers and supporters convened at St Patrick’s Community Centre on Tuesday to celebrate another winter of crucial work from Stable One, particularly the Yarra Valley Winter Shelter program.
From what started as a humble and hopeful effort in 2017 to help the homeless, the Stable One network has spread to three states while continuing to do important work at home base in the Yarra Ranges.
Chief executive Katherine Kirkwood said the event allows them to acknowledge the many lives that have been impacted by Stable One, both locally and further afield.
“We also know that Stable One is just one organisation among many working in the homelessness space, and many other charities right across our local region are doing incredible and valuable work, and each one is needed,” she said.
“The housing crisis that we find ourselves in is far bigger than any one organisation can tackle alone, in line with what is one of our core values of unity, our heart is to continue fostering a culture of collaboration,”
“When we cheer each other on, we celebrate each other’s wins, and we step in to fill the gaps where they need it, when we work together, we can achieve so much more than if we try to by ourselves.”
Board Chair Stacey Aslangul was invited up next to thank the governance team and financial supporters, including the Community Bank of Mt Evelyn, the Ricketson Foundation, the Sisters of Charity Foundation, the Lilydale Uniting Church, Gospel Resource, the St Andrews Foundation as well as the efforts of Andy Moore and fellow local homelessness support services Anchor Community Care and Holy Fools.
Operations Coordinator Sharon Jacob was invited to the stage to share some of the key statistics from the Yarra Valley Winter Shelter this year:
30 guests were approved to stay in the winter shelter and 27 did so, consisting of 14 women and 13 men, as well as two dogs.
The winter shelter was able to account for a total of 430 bed nights, serviced by 112 total active volunteers, including 34 people who did overnight shifts, for over 4000 combined volunteer hours.
After a short interval, Ms Kirkwood returned to the stage to share more about the impact of the wider network, and said it came about as an effective way to multiply the impact of their winter shelter model without having to directly facilitate every shelter themselves.
“Over the years, some shelter projects have come and gone, and that’s the nature of the work sometimes, because the shelter does really rely on local resources and circumstances but the growth over the last 12 months has been incredibly exciting,” she said.
“One year ago, we had three active affiliates, plus our own shelter here in the Yarra Valley and since then, five new affiliates have joined the network, which is so exciting,”
“Some ran pilot programs this year, while others are planning to launch infrastructure in 2026, we’re also in active conversations with at least six communities who are going to explore what a shelter looks like so it’s been a really big deal.”
A video filmed by the organisers of the new Bass Coast winter shelter, who piloted a program for the first time this August, was shown and detailed their experiences taking the model to their community.
Training and development board consultant Dr David Wilson spoke next and said they want to be more intentional about their training as they develop more ideas.
“We’ve already been involved, of course, in volunteer training, especially for the winter shelter…we’ve had some venue-specific training which I think is really good this year, the teams that were going to be in one of the venues specifically got there and did some training about what that venue was going to look like and how to work around things and I think that was a terrific addition to the training,” he said.
“Then also we had three online sessions across the winter for ‘alongside’ training which I really enjoy, and I’ve had some very encouraging comments from some people who were there,”
“The other thing that we’ve already been doing is community training…we had a great opportunity this year of talking to police groups…I talked to these eight sergeants from our district about homelessness and our perspective on homelessness, because it’s very important for them and necessarily so and their comments towards the end of it were around how they really appreciated a different perspective and it helped them to broaden their outlook.”
Stable One operates winter shelters in the Yarra Valley, Bass Coast, Benalla, Bendigo, Frankston, Wang, Parramatta, Toowoomba and Gympie while enquiries have come from communities in Adelaide, Tasmania and Bunbury.
Stable One’s welfare coordinator Heidi Rickard shared the challenges and highlights fo her role, a new one she took on this year.
“Dealing with people experiencing immense anxiety, fragility and times of volatility on a whole new level was a definitely challenge, dealing with complex mental health issues and people with huge legal issues like removal of their children, IVOs, court appearances and domestic violence and just knowing that I can’t actually do anything in those cases was really quite overwhelming,” she said.
“My highlights have been building a relationship slowly based on trusted care with one of our guests and watching him step out has helped us on to engage with others, as well as developing skills I didn’t know I had, sometimes I felt like I had to be a detective tracking down NDIS workers in country New South Wales and somehow managing to work with information documents from Centrelink,”
“I can tell you that the experience he had at the shelter was life-changing and we saw his personality and sense of humour and he even smiled and waved as the winter progressed, and when I left him in his new home, he gave me a big hug and thanked me for everything, which for him was huge.”
To conclude the evening, Ms Kirkwood returned to the stage to soft launch Stable One’s newest initiative, in the wake of the collapse of The Village proposal for Bayswater North, the Fast Haven Collective.
The Fast Haven Collective will be a collection of Stable One supporters with a room, unit, bungalow or any form of accommodation they are willing to offer to help provide different types shelter for the homeless at an affordable and comfortable arrangement for both parties. Stable One will provide expertise and support throughout the process if the new initiative gains traction, and anyone interested in participating or just supporting the Fast Haven Collective can find out more and express interest at stableone.org/fast-haven-collective/.
